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Promising Results in Stomach and Breast Cancer Drugs

ORLANDO, Fla. — The breast cancer drug Herceptin may now have a role in treating stomach cancer as well, according to study results announced here on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Scientists also announced that a new class of drugs called PARP inhibitors has shown promise against hard-to-treat forms of breast cancer and that a cancer vaccine for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that struck out twice might have succeeded on a third try.

In a study sponsored by Roche, which sells Herceptin, stomach cancer patients who received Herceptin in addition to standard chemotherapy lived a median of 13.8 months compared with 11.1 months for those who treated with standard chemotherapy alone.

Herceptin is used to treat the roughly 20 percent of women whose breast tumors have an abundance of a protein called Her2. In the new study, doctors found that 22 percent of 3,807 patients with metastatic stomach cancer also had high amounts of Her2 in their tumors. The study involved 594 of those Her2-positive patients.

Stomach cancer, also called gastric cancer, is rare in the United States, with about 21,000 new cases a year, but it is one of the leading types of cancer worldwide, with one million new cases each year.

Scientists also reported that PARP inhibitors might have promise against so-called triple-negative breast cancer, which lacks receptors for estrogen, progesterone and Her2, and therefore cannot be treated with hormone therapy or Herceptin.

PARP inhibitors block the action of an enzyme called poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase, which helps repair DNA. Without the ability to repair their DNA, tumor cells can die or more easily succumb to chemotherapy.

In a midstage clinical trial of 116 women with advanced triple-negative breast cancer, those who received the inhibitor in addition to standard chemotherapy lived a median of 9.2 months, compared with 5.7 months for those who received only the chemotherapy.

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The drug, BSI-201, was developed by BiPar Sciences, a biotechnology company in California that was acquired in April by Sanofi-Aventis. Two other small studies showed some promise for a PARP inhibitor being developed by AstraZeneca.

In a third announcement at the conference, scientists said a cancer vaccine being developed by a small company called Biovest International extended the remission of a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to about 44 months, compared with 31 months for a control group.

The vaccine does not prevent cancer but rather seeks to train the body’s own immune system to attack the tumor. The field has had a history of failure, though there are some recent signs of progress.

Two other companies, Genitope and Favrille, tested vaccines similar to Biovest’s and failed. Biovest might have succeeded because it required patients to first be in remission for six months or longer, so there was less tumor for the immune system to battle.

But that requirement meant half the patients in the trial did not qualify for treatment. Ronald Levy, a professor of oncology at Stanford who developed the technology in the vaccine, called Biovest’s trial only a qualified success and said it was still unclear if the vaccine would have a role in treating the disease.

It was also unclear if Biovest, based in Tampa, Fla., would be able to bring the product to market. Both Biovest and its majority owner, Accentia Biopharmaceuticals, filed for bankruptcy protection in November, after they were unable to raise financing from investors. But the company now hopes to find a bigger partner.

Correction: June 2, 2009

An article on Monday about a study that found promising results against breast cancer from a new class of drugs called PARP inhibitors misstated the name of one such drug from BiPar Sciences, a California biotechnology company. It is BSI-201  not BS-201.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Promising Results in Stomach and Breast Cancer Drugs. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe